Domain Issue
-
Starting a new local travel guide site. Would like to buy a domain and have found one with decent Domain Authority and Trust, but they want $2500 for the domain which I feel is a bit steep since I will be not using any of the content and it is generating hardly any revenue now. . I would rather not start from scratch with no links and no trust.
I have a few questions....
-Any suggestions on sites to look for domains or strategy for finding and offering to buy?
Any guidelines on how to value domains?
If I but it and change registration do I risk losing all the value? Cold I just change technical contact info?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Thanks.
-
Domaining is a huge industry in itself, but yes, there are some good ones out there. dnforum.com and namepros.com have been two sites that interest me a lot.
General guidelines- .com's are by far worth the most based on supply/demand, especially anything with a single dictionary word or 2-4 letters (less always better, no numbers always better). Other TLD's can be worth something, but seem to see much less consensus on their value. Even the above- it does vary. Sometimes you see a fish.com sell for $1 mil. I've seen other dictionary words go for south of $5k (although that's been a little while).
At the end of the day, I would only consider what it's worth to you though. I personally don't think that .com's will ever go anywhere, but the Internet is fast-paced, and there are no guarantees. There are some pros out there that are buying some pretty fancy boats off of buying and selling, but they do it in large volumes, and play the numbers. Personally, I ran a hosting company for 7 years, and had to resist a whole lot of temptation to buy up domains based on the enormous wealth of data of data on other webmasters kept in good faith that I had at my fingertips.
After leaving to start my own inbound marketing agency, I bought the domain of my last name (northcutt.com) for more than you've suggested, but there were real reasons (most of all, that I was left with little else than my personal brand to side-step into a totally different industry, and I had the chance to do it). But that price was built into my startup budget. Whatever you go with, I'd just make sure it's something you're happy with typing thousands of times, and explaining to people how to access. A lot. Anything short and memorable can also work well, and I wouldn't worry too much about weird TLD's for SEO anymore. Personally, I'm a big fan of .io domains as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain Name Migation + HTTPS?
One of our clients is considering migrating their domain name _and _changing protocol (http to https), as well as changing hosting providers, at the same time. Is it fine to make the changes at the same time, or would you recommend 'phasing' the migration?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThreeShips1 -
Domain Name
Hello everyone Please advice what to do in a situation when searching for a domain: www.domain.com google is recommending domain.org ? when these are completely 2 different sites? Does it has to do with trust rank? Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FusionMediaLimited0 -
Parked Domain question
Hi, If a domain has been parked for more than 12 years, and has never been used for a project so far, does this has an impact on SEO or its like having a fresh new domain? Sebi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler0 -
301 Redirecting Multiple Domains
I have several complete websites with blogs setup for different geo locations and was considering forwarding them all to one domain directly would greatly benefit ranking. The blogs are all linked together and that is where most of the links come from. Would I benefit in 301 Redirecting the domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Keywords in domains losing power
One of my clients received a letter from another seo company touting for business. I would be interested in hearing what your opinion is on this fellow SEO providers. Letter attached - > letter.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Domains merging
Hi everyone, The company I work for has two domains, one for the english version of the website and another one for the french version. Example: www.digitalmusic.com (in english) www.musiquedigitale.com (in french) (these are examples***) I would like to know if on SEO standpoint it would be better to only have one domain so all of the links link to the same domain. Would it increase the domain authority and our rankings ? We will then have: www.digitalmusic.com/fr/page1 for pages in french www.digitalmusic.com/en/page1 for pages in english with all the 301 redirects required... Thank you in advance for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0 -
Issues in Migrating to CMS
My number one client is migrating a formerly HTML/Dreamweaver site to an open source CMS (CMS Made Simple.) We have execellent rankings right now, and I am concerned about what we will lose, and how to ensure the rankings stay. Any guidance? I have already asked the developer to maintain the page names and structure, and tag the CMS output pages.htm . I've run a few weak spiders over the staged CMS site, and all the pages are being picked up. What else can I do, we are getting ready to launch. THANKS!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayt0